The Gifted
The''' Gifted''' are exactly what it says on the tin: gifted. With powers that usually develop at the onset of puberty and identifying marks to go along with them, the Gifted are hated by society has a whole. Schools such as Harmonics School for the Gifted have been established by governments involved in Operation Harmony to both protect and monitor the Gifted. History The Gifted were originally the brainchild of Dr Stephen Hall, a patriot who, at the end of the Great War, decided that were such a thing to happen again, the Allies had better have an advantage. He, along with his colleague Armitage Midgley, were doing research into the creation of a 'super-soldier' before the war. They had a couple of breakthroughs in 1913, but were called away from their theories and thoughts to produce weapons which would have more immediate effect. After the war, however, they were free to return to their own mad schemes and old breakthroughs - including a chemical which, when administered to certain people, created certain... changes in their genes. The first results were, shall we say, not particularly successful. Or indeed pleasant. Reader be aware - these were not nice men. However, a few years later they were introduced to a pair of French scientists, Lucien Royer and Marc Olivier, who had been researching similar ideas. The two pairs were able to combine their ideas and theories into something usable, creating a relatively stable serum. They tried giving the serum vast numbers of adults but, disappointingly, nothing happened. Over time, they were joined by Eric Norman and a female scientist called Jane Archer, who came up with the idea of giving the serum to children. A trial group of a thousand children resulted in one boy becoming incorporeal and a young lady announcing that the trees were talking to her. They were given permission to continue. The Second World War Arthur Hemphill and Frances Stocking, the two first Gifted, were recruited into a project called Operation Harmony, dedicated to training them to use their powers. There were, of course, several problems with this - not least the fact that no-one had the faintest idea how they worked. Nonetheless, they muddled through, and were soon joined by growing numbers of Gifted. By the outbreak of WWII, there were ten of them. By the end, the number had made it up to 40. The Gifted played a part in helping the Allies to win WWII, often becoming pretty close as they did so. However, after the war, they were all sworn into secrecy, and the legacy of the Gifted lay forgotten for the next few decades. 'Rediscovery' Of course, when young out of control Gifted start blowing up buildings, people are bound to notice. Though, it must be noted, that was an exceptional case and the young lady in question was under great duress. Nonetheless, while Gifted had mostly been hidden away by their families for the fifties, in the sixties they became more widely known, cool even, fitting in with the rebellious culture of the day. Over the next twenty years, however, public opinion started to turn against them in a series of mishaps and accidents, including the afore-mentioned blowing up of buildings. By the late 1970's, the Gifted were largely unpopular, and the government wasn't doing anything to either aid or deal with them. A promise to sort the Gifted out helped the Conservative party to win the 1979 election, and they put their plans straight into action, setting up an old stately home, owned by a young Gifted man, to become a 'school' - or, more accurately, somewhere to put them out of the way. For the first few years of its existence, Harmonics School for the Gifted was barely a school at all, but that slowly began to change, picking up speed with the government's focus on education in the late 1990's to become a very good school indeed. Of course, there have been some grumblings - why should they get special treatment? - but overall, it has been considered a good move, and Britain's approach has been considered among the best. The Gifted and Society Since the turn of the millennium, people have started to like the Gifted a little more - or, at least, to tolerate them. However, they are still generally disliked, partly just because they're different, partly because of ingrained prejudice, and partly because they are generally clever, pretty people with magical powers and who wouldn't hate them? Gifted are often subject to bullying at school, and those who aren't are unlikely to have wide circles of friends. Of course, there are always some individuals willing to look past this, and not all Gifted are complete loners. Religious groups, however, are likely to feel rather strongly - there are rumours of attempted exorcisms in the deep south of America. In the UK, legislation has been proposed to criminalise discrimination of the Gifted, with other countries slowly making similar moves. One of the few places the Gifted escape general animosity is South Korea. Firstly, the gifted have never faced such strong dislike there; whereas Operation Harmony was halted by the Allies after WWII, Korea began its own program (with the assistance of American scientists involved in Operation Harmony) at the outbreak of the Korean War. The Gifted served as public figureheads of the war effort. With the armistice, however, and general dislike for the conflict, attitudes towards the gifted began to fall more in line with the rest of the world. However, just over a decade ago, when a rival talent agency tried to destroy their competition by outing them as being Gifted, the celebrities' fans rallied behind their idols, and being Gifted became 'in' in South Korea. While not as accepted, attitudes towards the Gifted are improving in countries that consume large amounts of Korean media, as positive attitudes towards the gifted have become a common theme in K-drama and K-pop. Category:gifted